29 January 2010

Campaign Finance Reform: What the Supreme Court Did to McCain-Feingold is not what you might think or what Progressives want you tho think. As you listen to this remember the '08 presidential campaign and the $60,000,000 S.E.I.U. pumped into Barack Obama's campaign.

21 January 2010

"..... Nor is public insurance the silver bullet its proponents claim it to be, at least not in the manner in which they advertise it. “While the involuntarily uninsured were 7.1 percent more likely to die than the average,those with public insurance were 17.4 percent more likely to die than the average, with a death rate of 29.3 percent in 2002 and 39.7 percent in 2006,” Holt reported. “Those with public insurance were ten percent more likely to die than those who are involuntarily insured,” O’Neill said. (emphasis mine)

In fact, Americans do better with their patchwork system of health care than other nationalities do with “comprehensive” coverage. “Many European countries have organized screening programs, whereas the U. S. approach is relatively decentralized,” another team of researchers reported in the December 2009 issue of Health Affairs of international efforts at cancer detection. “Many European countries, unlike the United States, also impose upper age limits on screening.” (emphasis mine) .... read more

15 January 2010

Wall Street Journal Jan. 14, 2010Martha Coakley's Convictions
The role played by the U.S. Senate candidate in a notorious sex case raises questions about her judgment

The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults' name would be known around the globe. more...

Another senseless death may have resulted from the manslaughter case, say some doctors, because the district attorney overruled a request from Costin's family to donate his heart in a transplant to save another person's life, according to an article in the January 25, 2002 issue of the Boston Globe.

"Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley blocked the donation of Costin's heart after he was diagnosed clinically brain-dead," writes Sean P Murphy of the Globe, "to preclude any possibility that his assailant's lawyer might contend at the trial that Costin died of a pre-existing heart condition rather than the beating."

Although the move may have made sense as a matter of legal strategy, Murphy notes, some doctors say that a patient was probably denied a heart transplant because of it, and that preserving the heart would not have strengthened the prosecution's case any further "because it was demonstrably healthy, and transplant surgeons would have rejected it if any defects were discovered." The medical evidence, they argue, showed overwhelmingly that Costin died from head trauma and that his heart was fine, and that would have been enough to counter any doubts raised by the defense by questioning the cause of death.

This is one of many examples of Martha Coalkey's judgement which, taken as a body of evidence, proves she is not fit to serve the people of Massachusetts or America.

I have been asked why it matters to me, not being a resident of Massachusetts. It was Massachuestts' own liberal Tip O'Neill who said "all politics is local". In Coakley's case, should she be elected in the January 19th special election to replace the deceased Ted Kennedy, her YES vote on the corrupt health care reform bill would final nail in the coffin of freedom as we know it today.

To give you an idea of what Massachuestts' citizens think of Coakley, what follows is an endorsement of her posted at the very liberal Blue Mass Group. You've got to wonder, with endorsements like this, how is she even a candidate or in power as the Attorney General of MA... CORRUPTION is the only answer I can think of and I think her history proves that correct...

Let's get this out of the way. You might not want to vote for Martha Coakley. You might think she deserves what's she's getting after an absentee, self-satisfied campaign (why should I bail her out?). You likely want to send a message to everyone from the attorney general all the way to every Democratic official in Washington, DC. Odds are you didn't vote for her in the primary. And, you might be wondering if it'll make a difference who wins this Tuesday.

You got every reason to be pissed, but it needs to be clear: not voting for Coakley is the same as voting for Brown. And voting for Brown is a very, very bad thing. Read more...

13 January 2010

Salon.com: Brazilian, Dr. Zilda Arns Neumann, pediatrician and founder of Children’s Pastoral and Pastoral Care of the Elderly, was among those killed in the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Founder and director of one of Brazils most important NGOs, Zilda Arns' work focused on the monitoring of infants, children, and pregnant women. Her work resulted in a sharp decrease in infant mortality, both in Brazil and around the world. It was on just such a mission that she would end her life helping others in Haiti yesterday. Born in 1934 in Santa Catarina, Brazil, Dr. Zilda Arns was the mother of five chidren (four of whom survive her), and eight grandchildren. She was the sister of Dom Pauolo Evaristo Arns and Chrysostom.

Dedicated to helping children and women who struggle with extreme poverty and difficulties that go along with that, Zilda Arns coordinated over 155, 000 volunteers in Brazil with the Pastoral of the Child organization. When asked once if she thought she had a struggle breaking through barriers in the labor market because of her gender, she described never wanting gender to make a difference. She noted however, that she was passed over for higher and more important positions early in her career while working in Curitiba. She remarked, “Perhaps men have some limitations to find the capacity of women.” ... more

Please Contribute to An Organization of Your Choice For The Hatian Relief Effort

“He put the question to me explicitly — ‘The time is coming when something must be done,’ ” Freya von Moltke said. “ ‘I would like to have a hand in it, but I can only do so if you join in too,’ and I said, ‘Yes, it’s worth it.’ ”

So, with a wife’s assent, began a famous challenge to Hitler. At the height of the Nazi victories, Count Helmuth James von Moltke invited about two dozen foes of Nazism, many of them aristocrats like himself, to imagine a new, better postwar Germany.

For him, his wife’s participation was essential, as she remembered the conversation in “Courageous Hearts: Women and the Anti-Hitler Plot of 1944,” a 1997 book by Dorothee von Meding.

The dissidents met at the count’s ancestral estate, Kreisau, which Bismarck had given his legendary great-great-uncle, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, for his victories over Austria and France.

It was a perilous act of resistance. As many as half of the dissidents were later executed, some for actively plotting to kill Hitler, others for thinking the unthinkable: they had marshaled logical, moral and religious arguments to question the legitimacy of the Third Reich. Their high-minded planning for a future without Nazis angered a regime that expected to endure 1,000 years.

Mrs. Moltke, who disdained the title of countess, was the last living active participant in the group. She died of a viral infection on Jan. 1 at her home in Norwich, Vt., her son Helmuth said. She was 98.

"Moltke’s correspondence with his wife, published as Letters to Freya, constitutes, along with Anne Frank’s Diary, Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo, and a handful of other books, one of the great moral documents to emerge from World War II. In his letters, Moltke, the scion of Germany’s greatest military family, documents the mentality of war—what he called “cowardice, servility and mass-psychosis”–and how it undermined the moral essence of men and women, converting them to “machines with a particular function in a process.” Moltke was no pacifist, but he was a firm believer in international law and the laws of war as essential tools to protect the innocent and soften the harms of warfare. The processes he so skillfully observed can be found in some measure in every society enmeshed in war, not least of all in our own. Today, January 11, marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the death sentence that concluded his trial by the infamous Volksgericht for his courageous actions against the Hitler regime."

09 January 2010

REMEMBER the NY-23rd election last November - a close race between Owens(D) and Hoffman(I). Owens won and was conveniently and immediately sworn in to vote Yea, the Sunday following Nov 3rd, on H.R. 3962 - the House version of health care reform?

I've written below about the race between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy.

"Paul Kirk, currently serving as interim Senator in Massachusetts, has declared that Brown, if he should be elected, will be delayed from any voting in Washington for as long as possible. Masssachusett’s Soros-funded Secretary of State, the corrupt William Galvin, has promised to do everything he can to stall the certification of Republican Brown “so that Democrats can pass the healthcare bill”.

I feel I should be shocked and surprised - I'm not - justOUTRAGED!

I am also including below the fold an email I received from MoveOn.ORG about the race and the threat that Brown poses to the Democrats and Healthcare.

In 11 days, we could lose progressive hero Ted Kennedy's Senate seat—and with it, any hope for passing major progressive legislation this year.

A new poll Tuesday showed Democrat Martha Coakley's lead in the special election to succeed Kennedy is at the edge of the margin of error, and the non-partisan Cook Political Report now says it's very competitive.1 And today, some of the people behind the infamous Swift Boat and racist Willie Horton ads are spending $400,000 on a new attack ad. Republican Scott Brown and his extreme right-wing supporters are significantly outspending Coakley on TV.2

A Republican victory here would be a catastrophe—Democrats would lose their 60th vote in the Senate, health care could die, and the Republicans could block pretty much anything they want.

We can't let a right-winger take over Ted Kennedy's seat because not enough progressives are paying attention. Coakley urgently needs help before it's too late. Your contribution in the next 24 hours will help her expand her all-out campaign for victory. Can you contribute $5 to Coakley's campaign right away?

Martha Coakley will carry on Ted Kennedy's progressive legacy. In endorsing Coakley, Vicki Kennedy, Ted Kennedy's wife, said, "My husband fought for healthcare reform for more than 40 years. Martha Coakley shares those critical beliefs." Coakley has also been outspoken against restrictions in the bill on women's right to choose.3

As Massachusetts Attorney General, Coakley was aggressive in challenging the Wall Street titans who helped bring on the financial crisis, and she recovered tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers and victims of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and UBS for their deceptive activities.4 She'll be a strong fighter in Washington for tough regulations on the financial industry.

And Republican Scott Brown? He's a "free enterprise advocate"5 who thinks the system works just fine. But he's giving Coakley a serious challenge. He promised, "As the 41st senator I can stop a lot of this stuff in its tracks....I can actually force them to go back to the drawing board."6 And there are rumors that the Republican Party and the Club for Growth will also begin attack ads on Coakley soon.

And the race is further confused by the presence of a 3rd candidate, named Joe Kennedy, who isn't related to Ted Kennedy, but is a tea-party extremist. Martha Coakley needs our help to cut through the clutter and get her message out—on TV, at the doors, and on the phones.

At this moment, when Ted Kennedy's greatest goal in life is within reach, we cannot afford to let Republican extremists snatch away his legacy.

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/.
This email was sent to ___________ on January 8, 2010. To change your
email address or update your contact info,click here.
To remove yourself from this list, click here.

Bottom line: Martha Coakley is a progressive liberal democrat along the lines of Nancy Pelosi. She will fight for unrestricted abortion, government controlled health care, big government, overall weakness of American foreign policy and cap & trade.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll on the race, Brown is within striking distance and has a chance to win. A win here would mean the removal of Paul Kirk (Ted Kennedy's stand-in) and the loss of a critical single vote on the merged health reform bills.

1. Contact anyone you know living in Massachusetts and make sure they know the facts and will get out an vote. If they will be out of town let them know how to do the absentee ballot.

2. Oddly enough, it was Democrat Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill that said "All politics is local". So true. What happens in this race will effect every person in America and bring national events to a micro-level in every village, town, city and state in the nation. PLEASE GET INVOLVED. As a non-Massachusetts resident you can support Scott Brown by sending him money in support of the ideals and courage that made this nation great and provided for the inalienable rights and liberties available nowhere in the world today but in America.

3. Contact all family and friends and let them know of the importance of this race. Ask them to help support Scott Brown's campaign. Send them this posting by clicking the Share It button at the bottom of the post and then click and enter their email addresses.

4. Pray of Scott Brown and all who have the courage to fight for our rights and liberties.

Help educate family, friends and neighbors on the dangers and evilness of Jennings by forwarding a link to this posting to them and write your congressmen demanding the removal of Keving Jennings from public service. You can find the contact information for your congressmen at opencongress.org.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your
counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set
lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”